Illusion of Simplicity

It looked simple. Just a plain text file. Lines stacked neatly. The kind you expect to split and move on.

But as it turns out, “just split the lines” was an invitation to a much deeper rabbit hole. One where AI advice loops endlessly. Syntax tangles with formatting. And help docs dance around what’s really going on.

What seems like \\r\\n to the eye isn’t really text. It’s a carriage return and a line feed. Code 13 and 10. Invisible things, pretending to be readable.

So the split fails — not because the advice is wrong, but because what you're looking for doesn’t exist in the way you think.

That’s the trap of low-code: things seem trivial... until they’re not.

And the further you go, the more you realize it’s not the tool that simplifies — it’s understanding what you're doing, even when the platform says you don't have to.

Turns out, citizen development might not be a mass sport after all.